As the galaxy reels from the scale of the Nihil's attacks, word reaches the Jedi of a suspected Nihil presence of Corellia, far from their usual targets in the Outer Rim. With Corellia's own Jedi contingent busy with unrest on the planet's moon, a group of Jedi set off from Starlight Beacon to investigate.
Tropes in this novel include:
- Big Damn Heroes: Yoda appears at the climax to help rescue the others from the Nihil. Once he shows up, things really go downhill for them.
- Call-Forward:
- Ram coins the phrase "wizard".
- A young Proxima appears momentarily at the climax.
- Despair Event Horizon: Cohmac senses Orla's death at Starlight, which disillusions him so much he leaves the Jedi Order at the end of the book.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Reath and Ram are utterly appalled at the party where the theme is "dress like a Nihil", even before it turns out several Nihil are already there.
- Everybody Lives: Of the main protagonists, not a one of them dies, though some of them take a severe beating.
- I Will Find You: Zeen hears of Lula going missing and vows to find out what's become of them.
- Lured into a Trap: Ram and Reath help take part in a sting operation so they can pass Zeen off as the hot new thing.
- Powder Keg Crowd: A wake turns into an outright brawl, but as Crash admits with politicians, two bodyguarding agencies who don't get on, and more than a few drinks being knocked back, a fight was inevitable.
- Present Absence: The Corellian Jedi are busy dealing with a problem on the planet's moon, which was being secretly inflamed by Nihil agents to draw them away from the planet. Not a one of them makes a physical appearance in the novel.
- Production Foreshadowing: Early on, the Battle of Jedha, part of a following High Republic Phase II novel, is name-dropped.
- Rank Up: At the end of the novel, Reath is made a full-fledged Jedi.
- Refuge in Audacity: Nomar Tralmat hosts a masquerade ball where everyone is wearing a Nihil mask. As Corellia is in the Core Worlds, many of its residents believed the Nihil to be purely an Outer Rim problem. As Nomar is actually the Nihil agent Respriler, many of the party-goers are Nihil themselves, wearing their masks in plain sight. As Ram notes, the Nihil were able to show themselves out in the open under the guise of a tasteless joke.
- Revenge Before Reason: One of Crash's motivations, beyond professional and personal, is that Grindalid Standard Operating Procedure is to go after whoever they feel is responsible for the death of a loved one, which in this case is her if she can't find the actual culprit.
- Rousing Speech: Crash gives one to get the people of Corellia to help get rid of the Nihil, even if she finds it kind of corny herself.
- Schmuck Bait: A student protester on Corellia falls for that pretty girl he's just met. She's Sabata, who uses him to escalate the situation even further, then leaves him literally holding a bag full of thermal detonators.
- Simultaneous Arcs: With The Fallen Star and the High Republic Adventures series, which was also written by Older and has several plots that are continued or concluded within this novel.
- Spotting the Thread: Played for laughs when Crash reveals she knew all along Ram and Reath weren't proper Jedi Knights, on account of their youthful behavior and still having their braids... and also because she'd seen Cohmac and Kantam before she ever approached those two.
- Those Two Guys: Two separate ones, with Reath and Ram and Cohmac and Kantam.
- Zerg Rush: The Nihil, once they reveal themselves, attack in force. Even with Jedi powers on their side, everyone takes so much cumulative damage it slows them down.
